Munchausen makes NES a cartridge programmer

What a beautiful image of NES cartridges showing their private parts. These are the raw materials for the Munchausen Flash Cartridge project. A combination of a modified game cartridge and special USB cable makes it possible to program NES cartridges while inside an unmodified console. The cartridge has an added flash chip that is running a bootloader. By connecting a USB-to-NES cable to the second controller port a game image (or custom code image) can be flashed to one of the three game slots on the writable cartridge. The bootloader provides a menu at power-up to select between the three stored images, or can go straight to the previously selected image by holding down A when the console is turned on. There’s even a recovery routine in case of problems. Check out the demo after the break.

One thing we find interesting from the forum thread is a mention that it is technically possible to run code on the NES directly from the PC. That would sure make it easy to perform live chiptunes on NES.

Code and DIY instructions, as well as pre-made units for lazy people will be coming in the next few days/weeks. Keep an eye on my youtube channel or the chipmusic.org forum for announcements about the project.

Wow this is crazy, I’m working on almost the EXACT same thing, only it’s for the Virtual Boy and my cart has MicroSD for ROM storage and save support. My first prototype board should be here in a few days, I can’t wait!